


Love Is...

by AtlinMerrick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Profound and silly definitions of exactly what love is...to John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, each chapter stands alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-04-09 19:35:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 15,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4361579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is the grand gesture that gives you hope. The tiny gift that makes you feel treasured. Love is laughing so hard together you a little bit pee your pants. Yes indeed, John and Sherlock will tell you this: </p><p>Love is...whatever you believe it is. And herein is their proof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mother Fucking Edelweiss

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [AtlinMerrick: Love is... - Russian translation - Любовь - это...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6059301) by [SilverRaindemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverRaindemon/pseuds/SilverRaindemon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is...whatever we say it is.
> 
> Edelweiss for instance.

John dated a woman who dated a man who was in the tribute band for the Austrian band Edelweiss.

John and Claire went out for nearly a year, so John Watson knows all the words—including the yodeling (especially the yodeling)—of the song "Bring Me Edelweiss." The extended version. Seven minutes that. Seven _plus._

All this by way of explaining why right now Sherlock Holmes is on the floor, clutching his stomach, moaning in pain.

He tries to wheeze "Stop."

He attempts to pant "No."

He endeavours to crawl toward John and clutch at his knees, beseeching, but instead Sherlock is curled into a fetal ball on the bedroom floor and can do nothing but howl, _howl_ for reals and for true, because John's naked except for the tiniest, tightest of Sherlock's panties—panties so snug Sherlock's own arse over-flows them, chubby-like—and John's dancing around, spilling out of those knickers, and he. is. mother. fucking. yodeling.

Sherlock does not usually swear. Except when he's dying apparently. For Sherlock will surely die because he can not catch his breath for the laughing. He can not _breathe_ and though he likewise can not much move he _can_ flail and so finally Sherlock does it, he succeeds in swiping a long arm and grabbing John's ankle with one giant paw.

Things get worse.

Worse because instead of stopping, John's now standing right over prone Sherlock, singing and wriggling and waving his dick around as if he's a cheerleader and it's a pom-pom.

As soon as Sherlock stops having hysterics he will kill John, kill him dead for the wonderful joy of this horrid song, for making him laugh when he didn't want to laugh, when all he wanted to do was be left alone to dwell on something small and awful until it was _big_ and awful, until it was a terrible symbol of everything he is that's wrong…and…and…

…and then yodeling.

Ridiculous yodeling and Sherlock being forced, pushed, herded, god damn _carried_ away from melancholy by unmitigated madness. By John Watson wiggle-dancing in tiny panties, waving his limp cock around and spinning and singing and then the yodeling and that was where Sherlock started to stop breathing and seven minutes is a long time to go without oxygen but Sherlock did it, he's done it, and now is the aftermath, now he's starfished on the floor wheezing and giggling peacefully while John pants on the floor next to him.

Whatever he wanted to believe before, whatever terrible half-truths he needed to tell himself _about_ himself, well Sherlock's not got the energy for that any more.

No, the only thing Sherlock's got the vim to do is to think think think and to know, for reals and for true that… _this is what love is, this is what love is, this is love._

It's a flaccid dick still hanging out of tiny blue-silk knickers.

It's a man who will be foolish so that Sherlock does not frown.

It's telling that beautiful fool that you have muscle cramps because you laughed so hard and maybe you peed yourself.

It's half-holding hands as you both lie beside one another on the dusty floor.

Love is mother fucking edelweiss.

_As one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply figure the fuck out of depression. Which is to say I need the wee boon of seeing the joy in each day, I need the bigger boon of giving that joy to these glorious fools who bring me such joy. So once more unto the breach, dear friends! Though it's marked complete, this fic will be many tiny snippets about things John and Sherlock love, from lattes to, it seems, yodeling. Now go listen to[this worldwide hit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGG453HrGs) from about 25 years ago oh my mother fucking god._


	2. Dusk and Fingerprints

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things even out in 221B, they always do...

There is no romance in washing a vest foul with London dirt and body odour.

There's no joy in binning two rotted anal sphincters and three mashed brown eyes.

And for god's sake there's nothing but extreme agitation in paying the council tax bill.

Yet these three things have to be done at 221B and the person who does them is the one who gets sick of seeing them soonest.

That someone is almost always John.

Oh yes, Sherlock does laundry, cleans the fridge, pays…no, Sherlock never pays bills. But Sherlock does take care of scutwork, oh yes. Just not much, in comparison to how often John does it. Then again in comparison John doesn't find the rarest ruby in the world inside one of those binned anal sphincters, so it kind of evens out.

Sherlock Holmes makes _sure_ it evens out.

He does that by vanishing.

Sometimes he disappears for ten minutes. Maybe twenty. Rarely it's half a day. John will notice or sometimes he won't. Then he'll get a text.

_The roof. Bring glasses._

John will then do what John does: What Sherlock asks. He'll take two of whatever's clean (once it was tiny sake cups they bought at a charity shop so Sherlock could put a single eyeball in each for some experiment even Sherlock didn't understand) and go to the roof of 221B.

There Sherlock will be, on a cheap duvet he's just bought, one they'll later bin beside the brown eyes because in the end it'll be even more squelchy than they were, and Sherlock will be sitting cross-legged looking over Regent's Park as the sun sets.

When he sees John, he'll open his arms and legs and John'll snug between them. They'll pour some cold wine because the weather's muggy again, a kind of wet heat tourists never associate with London, and together they'll watch the sky change as summer dusk sneaks in over their city.

After the first bottle is empty and the sun has truly set, Sherlock will tell John things he's learned in the course of cases. Sometimes those things will be about wine. Or eyeballs. Or sphincters ("Please stop talking Sherlock, please"). Or, recently, Sherlock told John about John's own fingerprints, then about the oils and salts secreted by his fingertips, then about how much he loves the things John…secretes.

That's when the second bottle is opened and for half an hour John dips his fingers in the cool chardonnay and Sherlock sucks them. For another half hour John asks Sherlock questions that require S-word answers. About a half hour after that Sherlock realises John has got him to lisp approximately sixty-nine times. It's then the third and final bottle is opened though little is drunk and a lot is poured down John's shirt collar, over Sherlock's head, and a fair bit into everybody's trousers.

Then John nearly has an aneurysm when Sherlock pushes the empty bottle down his pants in a highly suggestive manner and sighs "Thuck me."

So John does and then Sherlock does and then they go back downstairs and John takes the rubbish to the kerb because it's that time of the week, and Sherlock cleans up more of the exploded kidney experiment because John can't reach that high along the kitchen wall, and then they take turns having showers because chardonnay is sticky.

So. All told, things even out at 221B. Yeah, usually they do.

 _What is love? I think it is whatever we say it is, so when I asked recently on Twitter for prompts, thinking I'd use them in "Minutiae," I realised instead I wanted to use some here to answer_ Love is... _Thank you for dusk and fingerprints, Kizzia!_


	3. The Princess and the Pee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love, lust, and John taught Sherlock to see and to observe. 
> 
> This by way of explaining that while Sherlock has always had a certain grace to him, he's serenely certain as a princess about his looks now.
> 
> Yes. Well.

Sherlock has a certain level of casual cool. He's always thought his wardrobe and his genius ensured that, at least to the insouciant observer.

What Sherlock used to think of himself on a more personal level was a bit different. In the mirror he saw a face whose features were each wildly unique, saw hands, neck, and bum so 'generous' that he avoided looking at the lot of them.

Then love, lust, and John taught him to see and to observe. John didn't see a conflagration of exotica when he looked at Sherlock's face, he saw all of him whole and found him beautiful. He didn't piecemeal long fingers, long neck, big bum, prehensile toes. Again he took in the gestalt and loved the man, _all._

This by way of explaining that while Sherlock has always had a certain grace to him, he's serenely certain as a princess about his looks now.

 _This_ by way of explaining that in Sherlock's self-satisfied mind's eye, a princess does not pee himself.

Yet, well, _this_ princess does.

Sherlock can remember the first time it happened, but because it _was_ the first time he didn't credit it. It was an anomaly, an outlier, like a rogue asteroid streaking toward the face of the sun or untainted milk in 221B.

But that second time, that time was more dramatic because he'd forgotten about the first time. So it was kind of like the first time only more distressing because he knew it was the second time and therefore a _pattern._ A pattern separated by nearly two years but two things can be parted by decades and yet if they were each caused by the same thing, laughing so hard he went breathless, then that was a _pattern._

Sherlock told John right away because Sherlock will tell John anything, including the state of the bacteria in his own belly button (Sherlock keeps track), the taste of John's ejaculate vis-à-vis the secret experiment he realises he should have mentioned sooner but he's mentioning it _now_ and he's saying nice things like 'it tastes delicious after the pineapple scones but not the black currant,' and also when he has laughed so hard he's urinated in his drawers slightly.

"John I've peed my pants again," Sherlock said breathlessly after that second time, then the third, which happened about five years after the first. Being as this time neither of them had any idea why seeing Mrs. Hudson in a fake moustache should put them into such a state, they also couldn't explain why every now and again Sherlock can't clench hard enough to not wet himself.

This by way of saying that it's been thirty-four years since the first time and it has now happened sixteen times.

One of those times was because of a laughing gas-type experiment and Sherlock was wily, preparing in advance by stuffing a sanitary napkin in his trousers. John pretended to admire the new bulge but Sherlock was not amused. (And then he was, because the experiment was so successful he needed a second pad.)

Three of those weeing-in-his-knickers moments came from unexpected inputs, such as Mrs. Hudson's moustache, Mycroft's face when he saw a drunk Greg put a jelly bean in each nostril, and an internet video of a hedgehog playing the piano.

The other twelve times princess Sherlock lost his casual cool and peed himself? Each of those beautiful, moist moments came from John doing something to make Sherlock laugh, and laugh, and laugh. John's goal is to reach twenty-five before their golden wedding anniversary. (John keeps track.)

So far so good.

_Look, I did say that in my opinion love is many things. So when I mentioned in the very first of these that Sherlock peed his pants a bit out of sheer hysterics, well, I became convinced that love is also making your One True Love laugh so much he loses bladder control. P.S. That reference to their future is for you Chocola; it always is._


	4. Gold Star Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year Sherlock was eight he finally figured out that you only got a gold star if you were the best at something, the very best.
> 
> Sherlock really wanted a gold star.

He wanted the reward of the silver star because even at five-years-old Sherlock very much liked silver.

He asked the teacher what he had to do to earn a silver star and the teacher said, "Well, you get silver if you've worked very hard at something, but got a little bit of it wrong."

So when they had to write down five maths problems from the blackboard and solve them, Sherlock worked so, so hard to get the right answer for each equation, then he erased the answer on the second one—it was five, just like him—and put down a six instead.

He got a silver star, and he was happy.

The next year Sherlock liked the red stars best because they made him think of his new puppy.

He asked the teacher what he had to do to earn a red star and the teacher said, "You get a red one when you draw the very best drawing you can."

So Sherlock asked mummy to help him find a picture that was "really pretty" and she showed him a magazine photograph of long, bright white strings with glowing bits, all on a field of blue, and told him they were pyramidal neurons and that his brain was so, so full of them. Excited, Sherlock stuck his tongue out the corner of his mouth and drew a picture of the picture in mummy's magazine.

He got a red star, and Sherlock was happy.

The year after that, Sherlock fell in love with the blue stars after seeing a fuzzy blue carpenter bee.

He asked the teacher what he had to do to earn one and the teacher said, "Write a very good report about something interesting at home."

So Sherlock followed his brother Mycroft all around for several hours, hiding behind sofas and doors and pretending he was a spy-pirate, and he took notes about the things Mycroft did and then he wrote a report called _A Guide to My Brother Mycroft, with Some Observations Upon How he Segregates His Food at Dinnertime._

He got half a blue star on that report— _half_ a star?—and Sherlock was not happy.

It seemed the teacher did not believe a seven-year-old boy could know _observations_ or _segregates_ and it didn't matter when Sherlock explained that his brother had explained those words to him last summer when they studied bees, the teacher just nodded and that was the end of that.

The year after Sherlock was eight and teachers didn't give stars out very much but still Sherlock wanted a gold one because he finally figured out that you only got gold if you were the best at something, the very best.

Well Sherlock knew he was very good at chemistry and he could identify the six most poisonous plants in London, also he could draw worker bees _and_ queen bees, yet when he proved he was good at these things, the very best, the teacher said he shouldn't show off, and again implied he was somehow cheating.

When Sherlock sought support from other kids they said things that were worse, and pretty much Sherlock stopped wanting stars and stopped wanting something he hadn't even known he'd been wanting all his eight years: The praise of other people for doing something good.

Which is one reason why, over time and for too many years, Sherlock became good at being a certain sort of bad.

And Sherlock was not happy.

Then there was John.

John Watson, who watched Sherlock spin round and round at crime scenes like an attention-seeking _top,_ but he didn't say 'show off' he said _fantastic, amazing, incredible._

Then one very early morning, months and months after they had become them, after bodies and souls and secrets had been shared, Sherlock woke smiling, remembering their night before, remembering John panting _beautiful, yes, please_ into his mouth. Then, just as Sherlock stretched in pleasure, reaching across the bed for John he heard the busy bustle of breakfast-making in the kitchen…

…and suddenly he felt funny.

Pushing back the duvet, Sherlock sat up quickly, looked at his arms, his chest, his belly, legs, and cock and—

Sherlock bounded from the bed and ran to the loo. He looked in the mirror and touched his cheek, the tip of his nose, his chest and arms and he counted…one, two, three…fifteen, _fifteen_ gold stars stuck all over his naked body.

Sherlock looked and he looked in that mirror for the longest time and maybe, just maybe, he cried a little.

Because Sherlock Holmes…was happy.

_Iriswallpaper said something about gold stars and I remembered how much I used to love those little foil things teachers would put on your homework…then I kind of figured Sherlock would love them, too. (And yes, the title of his report about Mycroft is meant to echo the title of the bee book Holmes writes during his ACD-canon retirement...)_


	5. Right As Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft is brilliant, but even he knows that sometimes, just sometimes…a little child will lead him.
> 
> For Mycroft, Sherlock has always been that little child.

What we teach doesn't stop with the person we teach. There are ripples that flow out from every good lesson.

Like so…

Harry Watson is in a bit-not-good place right now. Her story is a complex one of constant warring against self-damaging impulses, while beneath all the mess a good and stout heart struggles.

It didn't use to be that way. When Harry was eight and her little brother six, Harry taught John something good, something important: How to steal.

The things that smart child stole were moments of glee.

Like so…

When mum and dad let them roam hand-in-hand through Harrods all by themselves? Well it wasn't long before Harry spied a bright-eyed man at the confection counter, giving away chocolates.

She buzzed herself right over there, Johnny's hand in hers, and very politely asked for chocolates. The man gave one to each child and off the two went to relish their treats.

After was when the lessons in thievery began. Harry tugged John after her again and again they stood before the man with the samples and Harry said a simple truth. "We would like more please."

The man tilted his head. He smiled wide and it matched his fine bright eyes. Then he squatted in front of the two children and held the tray toward them. He whispered, "Take two each."

When they did, instinctively hiding them in the pockets of their coats, the man looked left, right, then said through pursed lips, as if disclosing enemy intel, "Two more, take two more then run like the wind!"

They did, and then they did, and that was the beginning of John Watson's lessons in stealing bits of joy where joy could be found. Further lessons from Harriet over the years included the art of crunching autumn-dry leaves beneath trainers, the wisdom of letting puppies in the park trounce all over your spread-eagled body, and the necessity of singing at the top of your voice when no one was home.

It's a fact that Harry Watson went and grew up and for now seems to have forgotten what she once knew so well, but John Watson has not. And John Watson is the kind of man who teaches what he knows, always has, always will.

This is why Sherlock Holmes is doing something rare and his brother something rarer still.

They're kicking rain puddles.

It was one late summer storm when John taught Sherlock the sometimes-necessity of this and right now Sherlock's teaching it to a man who needs desperately to know that when life leaves you burdened with so very many shoulds-musts-wrong-wrong- _wrong,_ well balance can be sought and glee found by kicking puddles.

Like so…

"If you do it again Sherlock, I will smite you."

Sherlock did it again.

Mycroft did not smite him. Mycroft did what Mycroft does, rolled his eyes audibly and looked to the sky. The sky pissed on him harder.

They were walking from 221B to Mycroft's Mayfair flat. Few realise the Holmes brothers have lived little more than a mile from one another most of their adult lives. Fewer still realise that their regard for each other goes deeper than their bickering implies.

Which is why Sherlock single-mindedly splash-stepped into puddle after puddle, drenching his brother's cuffs, his cashmere socks, his wing tips.

"Sherlock Holmes, I am bigger than you and I will do something untoward if you do that one more—"

Sherlock did that one more time, only this time he giggled.

Oh he _giggled._ Like a boy of three, a small boy who used to fist both little hands around as many of Mycroft's ten-year-old fingers as he could hold and, in an excited, piping-high voice he'd tell stories to his big, brilliant brother, stories about the busy ants by the chestnut tree, the broody pigeons in the park, and how sometimes he's pretty sure the pigeons eat the ants and that's very sad but then, then, _then_ he once saw ants eating a dead pigeon and that was sad too and can we get custard creams My, please My, can we _please?_

The mad three-year-old giggling came later, as they crumbled custard creams over an ant pile, watched tiny bugs carry off the bounty. Mycroft remembers how he'd kept breaking biscuit after biscuit just to hear that giggle.

And now, a quarter mile from his warm, dry Mayfair home Mycroft Holmes stops still as stone in London's chill rain and he listens to his forty-three-year-old brother giggle like that child forty-years gone and Mycroft does now what he did that long ago day, he whispers…

_…and a little child shall lead them._

Then Mycroft Holmes, six foot one inch tall and fifty-years-old month after next, follows his little brother, kicking hard at a rain puddle.

Sherlock squeals, "Not the coat! Not the coat!" and tugs up his Belstaff as if it were a delicate hoop skirt. Then Sherlock runs toward Mayfair, Mycroft hot on his heels and hitting every puddle on the way.

_Jogging in the rain today I saw a mum and dad trying to get their toddler to jump in a puddle. He wouldn't until dad did, then that baby boy went hell for leather stomp-stomp-stomp! Afterward I ran through every. single. puddle. It was glorious. (Thank you[for sending this](http://pocketsizepeople.tumblr.com/post/79125928241?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma) Chocolamousse!)_


	6. Unsavoury Synonyms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes love is split infinitives and poodle poop.
> 
> Sometimes it just _is._

"What's another word for magnificent?"

Sat at the kitchen table and squinting over a brace of microscope slides, Sherlock Holmes placed precisely one drop of urine on an even dozen glass strips. "Impressive. Superb. Majestic. Splendid. Glor—"

"Splendid!" shouted John Watson, despite being just on the other side of that kitchen table. He began typing again in mumbling silence for the next five minutes.

At the six-minute mark Sherlock, still bent over and peering far-sightedly at his slides, held one out toward John, said politely, "Spit."

Without looking away from his computer screen John leaned sideways, beaded a discrete drop of moisture out the side of his mouth, let it drip slowly down onto the slide. He continued typing as he did so.

The two men of 221B proceeded about their business for another ten minutes.

It was at minute eleven that John paused, fingers poised like a pianist over his keyboard and, teeth bared, he stared hard at a spot on the wall above Sherlock's left ear. This was noted by Sherlock's peripheral vision and without looking away from the frisky happenings on his slides, Sherlock murmured, "Bizarre, hideous, unpleasant, vile, grotesque, rep—"

"Grotesque!

John attacked his keyboard again, fingers tap-tapping with fervour. It did not occur to him to wonder how Sherlock knew he sought an alternate word for ugly. Instead he correctly presumed he'd done something detectable to his detective. (It was the wrinkled nose and baring of his teeth. The victim had had a mouthful of the most foul dentition, so grim they had turned the stomach of one rock-steady physician _and_ most of Scotland Yard.)

Silence prevailed for long minutes. The contents of two slides burst into tiny flame. This was apparently a positive outcome for Sherlock hooted gleeful. Several minutes later another slide was waved near John. "Nasal secretion please."

John opened his eyes, hunkered down over his computer, and finished the sentence he'd finally found after rooting round his head… _and the air of the room was fetid with the odour of death._ John then leaned toward Sherlock's slide and sneezed on it. Sherlock murmured his thanks.

And so it went for the remainder of that day. A day full of busyness and exceedingly unique _I love yous_ exchanged between two exceedingly unique men.

To be sure, John Watson has, from week one, day one, _hour_ one of his tenancy in 221B found Sherlock's experiments profoundly off-putting. When you have sat down at the kitchen table only to find your one true love is swirling infant vomit and poodle fecal matter in an Erlenmeyer flask while you butter your toast, you are allowed to be revolted by what your darling does with his time.

Still and all, when entreated for the fifteenth time "please don't forget John," John will indeed remember, collecting the 'vitally required' infant vomitus from the surgery, and bringing it home in a urine specimen cup. He will also put down a plastic tarp on the table once the vomit meets the poodle poop. And when asked to spit on a slide, John always will, for it helps keep Sherlock buzzingly busy such that he sometimes happily hoots. Those hoots are and ever will be all John needs to continue about this unsavoury business of being a de facto lab assistant.

Sherlock Holmes, since that first blog post where John used the words stupendous, meretricious, grandiose, dashing, and dastardly—who, _who_ in the twenty-first century actually employs the word dastardly?— believes that John Watson's extensive blog prose does next to nothing to properly explain the finer points of detection and deduction, as a matter of fact Sherlock's pretty sure John's over-romanticised tomes set things back a tick or two.

However, Sherlock Holmes will sit across from John all the days of their life together and he will, when the need arises, offer synonym services to his one true love and, much more than that, he will encourage him to write up every silly adventure and each dramatic drama in which they are involved. And when, years yet in their future, John feels uninspired, perhaps unimportant, it will be Sherlock who encourages him to write his first book about what they do, going so far as to suggest it be "romantic and adventurous." In short, Sherlock will find joy in helping John find his.

This is by way of saying that if they know absolutely nothing else, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes know this: When the other person's happiness is important to your own? Well that, _that_ right there is the definition of love.

So. One man spits when asked. The other suggests when required. And each knows, oh yes he so very much knows…that he is _loved._

_I love the idea that though sometimes neither likes what the other does, they help. They always will, come fecal matter or split infinitives. Because that is love._


	7. Well-Fucked Angel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the longest time, Sherlock was described with one superlative—genius—and endless epithets—idiot, bastard, freak, fool.
> 
> Like everyone else, Sherlock thought the first must always come with the rest and so he grew familiar with the hateful litany.
> 
> Then came John.

It's old news, the Sherlock of before.

That man was all self-defense and drama. That Sherlock was described with one superlative—genius—and endless epithets—idiot, bastard, freak, fool.

Like everyone else, Sherlock thought the first must always come with the rest and he grew so familiar with the hateful litany that eventually he became eager for the oaths and curses, because anyone kicked enough begins to seek the kicking, for every beast craves attention, no matter how beastly.

So when Sherlock aired his genius in the back of a cab bound for Brixton, he pulled out all the stops, going beyond the kind-of-courteous—"but you're a war hero who can't find a place to live"—right on to the nasty and unnecessary—"and maybe you _liked_ his wife."

After this display Sherlock sat back and waited for the attention he craved.

 _Go on John Watson. What will it be? Idiot? Dick? Freak? Those are tried and true. There's also fucker, bitch, whore, creep, and halfwit. Less common those, but they're still goers. Or maybe you'll have new words for what I am. Go on. I_ dare _you._

As if he could read Sherlock's mind John went right ahead and did as requested. There and then, in the back of a taxi cab taking the long way south of the river, John found brand new words for the man beside him.

Amazing.

Fantastic.

Extraordinary.

Those were the first that came to mind. Years later John would admit they weren't his best work, though they did the job that needed doing just then. They were a decent foundation on which to build, and build John did. The good doctor didn't know it then, but it would be his life-long work, erecting this fine and delicate shelter of words for the man that would become his one true love.

It was when _that_ happened, when they moved from flatmate to friend to beloved that the bricks John used to build his Sherlock-shaped sanctuary started to change, that's when the bricks of praise took on wondrous new shapes.

Some were elegant.

"My darling, my sweetheart, my only."

Some earthy.

"You sexy creature, my luscious love."

Some were big.

"Forever."

"Always."

And some small.

"Mine."

"Yours."

"Yes."

No matter their shape or their size, each wordy brick was grand, though for a long little while one was Sherlock's favourite. That brick? Well that one was laid one night after Sherlock got laid.

* * *

In the beginning of their relationship John, sexually-experienced John, sweetheart-to-the-regiment John, John who had indeed been biblically known across three continents and upon seven large bodies of water, well he could make love, have sex, fuck, shag, snog, rut, frot, lick, tickle, kiss, and cuddle through half the night and still wake the next morning with a teeth-baring grin, a bounce in his step, and a song in his sexually-satiated little heart.

Sherlock? Well that was another story.

A triple-lock safe tricked out with a chloroform-gas release chamber, somehow found empty of thirty million pounds worth of jewels, not a single fingerprint, footprint, or suspect to be found?

That delicious dilemma kept Sherlock awake for sixty-eight hours without his even once noticing the setting and rising of the sun.

A trail of century-old body parts left dangling from six London bridges, each accompanied by a poem and some Christmas tinsel?

This gruesome Yuletide gift had Sherlock so alert he kept forgetting to blink and ended up using up Lestrade's entire bottle of eye drops.

Yes, for some things Sherlock had energy to spare. Then came coming.

In the beginning of his relationship with John, Sherlock had the sexual experience of an aquarium-bound marmorkreb. This is to say none. This did not mean he was not passionate about their passion, just that his desire did not translate into _stamina._ The first time he came with John, _in_ John, well afterward he passed clean out and drooled into his pillow for a solid seven hours.

This was fine with John who, thoroughly besotted, adored Sherlock's wheezy little sex snores nearly as much as he'd loved his lusty shouts.

Yet this state of affairs was not one bit all right with Sherlock, who is, at his core, a curious man.

So Sherlock wanted to know John's body before orgasm, during, and after. He wanted to taste him from armpits to arse and back again. He wanted to listen to his heart beat and his tummy rumble. And after _he_ came, he wanted to close his eyes and feel John's fingers drift over his goosefleshed skin and spit-slick mouth. Wanted to listen to John count his heartbeats and heaving sighs.

What Sherlock emphatically did not want to do was _fall asleep._

So he didn't.

It took some time, but over time Sherlock learned how to fortify himself on John's kisses and his come, how to find fuel in John's sympathy keens when he himself came.

And though they'd go on to have many long nights, it'll be that first long one Sherlock remembers best, that dozy, dreamy night where they came quick, then dallied and nuzzled until they were ready to come slow. They tried for a third and got sweaty in the trying, despite winter winds gusting round window sashes.

It was after all of that, as they lay draped across one another and dawn was scattering shadows, it was then that John propped himself up on his elbows and both smitten and solemn-serious, he looked at Sherlock's sleepy eyes, his divinely kiss-chapped lips and frizzy halo of curls, and he pronounced his one true love "my beautiful, well-fucked angel."

Though the words were earthy, they were nevertheless a sweet, sweet catalyst, for it was then, right then, that the old Sherlock Holmes began to wither and a new one to take root. This new Sherlock still believed in his own genius, oh yes, but he no longer believed its price was his pride.

That long-ago night when he and John slowly built the foundation of who they would together become, Sherlock stopped believing he was a freak and instead began to believe in something real, something true. Sherlock began to believe he was loved.

_I started with the term 'a fucking angel' from chapter eight of 221b_hound's "[Captains of Industry](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4351433/chapters/9870359)"—as you do—and then happy emo went and dribbled all over everything._


	8. Looking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "—and up there, near the rose window? A bit of pornographic sixth century graffiti actually, back when London was known as Lundenwic—"

Like seeks like.

A lonely man meets a lonely man and finds in that hour, that very minute, he is no longer lonely. Soon they take a place in central London.

A man who craves adrenaline finds himself drawn to a man hungry for adventure. Soon they're running together in the dark.

A man whose feet are firmly on the ground, grounds a man who needs ballast. In return that flighty man teaches his one true love to look, look, look _up._

"—and from down here on the pavement, the child's penis looks in proportion due to foreshortening. If we were six floors up, next to the statue, you'd see his cock actually hang nearly to his knees. Really quite startling in a toddler."

One second…two…

John turned, bumped his smile into the shoulder of Sherlock's Spencer Hart jacket.

"And I'll never understand why statues of little boys urinating down on things is such a popular artistic motif."

One second…two…

A warm, skittering huff of laughter followed the smile into expensive cotton.

Sherlock tucked John's arm tight against his side and they proceeded on their city promenade.

"—and why Duke Farringdon thought building this monstrous 'castle to commerce' would draw London's fledging financial district one mile west no one knows. Additionally no one ever discovered how thirty-three rudely-gesturing monkeys carved into the cornice up along the roof edge was supposed to help."

One second…two…

John pressed his mouth to Sherlock arm again, breathed another soft laugh. Eventually they moved on, looked up, looked up, looked up.

"—and do you see how the steeple resembles a tiered wedding cake? That's because St. Bride's church—"

And…

"—up there, near the rose window? A bit of pornographic sixth century graffiti actually, back when London was known as Lundenwic—"

And…

"—that plaque over the doors there? It commemorates the 38-minute war between Zanzibar and Great Britain. Shortest war in history."

And so it went that day, from dawn to dusk.

* * *

Afterward, John sat on their bed.

Slump-shouldered and tired, he looked at nothing much. A spot left of centre on the rug. A bit of dust. Something…in the past. Something thirty years back where memories of his grandmother lived. At long ago summers in her vegetable garden, were they'd sit in the sun and eat cherries she'd bought special for him.

John had a couple times talked about taking Sherlock up to Gairloch to see her and the small town in which he'd spent precious summer weeks, showing him the lighthouse he'd loved and gram's garden, that crazy hodge-podge mess of strange things.

Chest puffed out, their fingers laced, he'd planned to show her Sherlock, this wonder of his world, the most amazing of men. John knows she'd have been a bit shy about who they were to each other, and she'd have said something silly about grandchildren, but she'd have been sweet and would have loved Sherlock because she loved John.

Now it was too late and they'd never—

John clutched at the cloth of Sherlock's trouser legs, Sherlock who had been standing in front of him ever since they'd got back, ever since John sat down, head down.

Sherlock knows he doesn't know how to banish John's grief. Knows walking all over London looking up and telling stories offered only brief distraction from that grief. And when the distraction was done and John crumpled like a ragdoll, Sherlock knew he would stay right where he was.

Because, you see, John Watson has had the great good fortune to find himself an uncommon man. A man who will offer him adventure and adrenaline, silly stories and long walks. A man in whose rarest of eyes he will, eventually, find healing. 

Sherlock cupped John's face, lifted his chin.

All John has to do is look up.

_Don't know why the last few have been so emo, but humour on its way soon. And this chapter riffs a bit[on this snippet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/528912/chapters/939600). P.S. London really was Lundenwic long ago, there was actually a 38-minute war, and St. Bride's steeple does look like a wedding cake. The rest I made up. P.S. After this, Noadventurehere was inspired to write the sweetness of "[Panacea](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4730051)," her own story about John, Sherlock, joy, and grief. Go read!_


	9. Kissing Sherlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things should never be counted...

When he met Sherlock, John Watson was thirty-nine years old.

When he met John, Sherlock Holmes was five.

*

"I'm sorry John, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

John stared at the splatter on the cafe floor.

"It was surprising."

It was brown-beige, the splatter.

"I was surprised."

Steam rose from it.

"It didn't burn you?"

John toed at the steaming brown-beige splatter on the cafe floor.

"I'll buy another. If you like. I'll buy several. Some for later. I'll have one with you. That thing. What that thing was. The mocha thing."

Sherlock stood up. To show he meant it. About buying more mocha things.

John looked away from the brown-beige splatter, and into pale and serious blue.

And if this were a scene on a DVD, here was the point at which John Watson would pause the programme. Then he'd have himself some thinky thoughts.

Standing in a busy cafe at seven on a dark winter morning, a large, hot splatter of mocha latte cooling on the pretty parquet at his feet, John could not temporarily stay the action, but he could still have himself some thinky thoughts. And so he did.

Those thoughts, unconstrained by time or space, frisked willy-nilly over the last two months in which Sherlock Holmes and he had first begun their love affair.

*

"One hundred fifty-eight."

"What?"

"Talking to myself."

~ 

"One hundred and eighty-three."

"What?"

"Just mumbling, John."

~

 _"Two_ hundred!"

"Tell me."

"What?"

"Tell me, Sherlock."

Sherlock did not tell.

"You count something. Every day. What?"

Sherlock did not tell. Not then, not the next day, and not the day after that, even when he caught himself mid-mumble, "Two hun—"

The day after _that_ day though, well that day John did for the first time what he'll do in future times of sharp need: He got Sherlock tipsy. Claimed it was in celebration. "Day I officially became a doctor!" hailed the doctor, knocking back a scotch.

They'd each downed three before John said, "So what's today's count?"

"One hundred and eighty-three," Sherlock replied reflexively, "But we have four hours until bedtime."

In bed Sherlock was almost asleep when John muttered, "What's the final tally?"

Sherlock snorted sleepily. "Two hun'red twenty."

Two hundred and twenty… _what?_ John was not a deductive genius but John would find out. Yes he would. Tomorrow. Day after. He'd solve this case.

With a kiss between Sherlock's shoulder blades, he was about to say good night, when Sherlock murmured, "Two'hunred twenty-one."

And John understood.

*

With great power comes great responsibility. Superior strength breeds superior ambition. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

There's all sorts of sayings that amount to kind of the same thing: Each gift comes with a price. The brilliant concert pianist can't do basic maths. The three-time Oscar winner has been divorced twice that. The arrogant consulting detective thinks the man who loves him will eventually leave.

And so he counts.

How many months, weeks, and days have passed since he and John first made love.

How many endearments John has for him.

And kisses. Mostly Sherlock counts their kisses.

He keeps a daily tally, to which he adds the weekly and monthly whole.

Right from the start it seemed important Sherlock know. Know how many kisses there are, so he'll know how many kisses there _were._ After John grows exasperated, after he truly understands that Sherlock knows only a very few things and those things he knows? They make him freakish. Abnormal. Bit not good. And forever unable to love John the way John should be loved.

So Sherlock counts endearments. Days. Kisses. Waiting for the day John is done.

Which brings John back to a programme already in progress: A mouthful of mocha cooling on pretty parquet because, when John said, "What do you want to drink Sherlock?" Sherlock had mumbled, "Whatever you're having," and continued texting Lestrade.

John returned with their drinks, handed one to Sherlock, picked up _The Guardian,_ and was about to sit down and happily be ignored for however long it took before Sherlock began running them round the compass.

Yet, before John got the chance to even shake out his paper, Sherlock took a sip of his beverage and, like a mocha-latte-hating child of five, spit his beverage on the floor.

The brown-beige stream narrowly missed John's trousers and right shoe. For a moment John thought Sherlock had spit because Sherlock had burned. He began to say something to that worried effect, when Sherlock growled, _"Mocha_ latte? Really?"

Then the panicked babbling had begun. The _I'm sorry John, I'm sorry I'm sorry._ The offer of more lattes. And one more thing.

Sherlock was doing something he sometimes does, something he doesn't want John to see but John does. He was blinking fast, hands fisted, and he was _counting._

Only the thing he was counting wasn't kisses or endearments, it was _the arsehole thing I just did added to the arsehole thing I just said, multiplied by how many of these John can stomach before John says, "Fuck it."_

Before Sherlock could run off to get a half dozen lattes no one wanted, before he could school his face to indifference instead of fear, John took Sherlock's wrist.

Then John looked at his mocha latte. The one cooling on the low cafe table. The one from which he'd taken three sips before he even left the cafe counter because John Watson loves mocha lattes nearly as much as he loves blowing Sherlock and _John loves blowing Sherlock._

Anyway, that was the latte at which John looked, until Sherlock looked, too. Then John lifted his foot and shoved the cup off the table. Mocha latte splashed all over the floor.

"Fuck it," John said. Then John smiled at Sherlock, and John took Sherlock home.

*

They have the best duvet.

It has a textile thermal resistance rating of blah blah blah, and a heat flow watts per square inch of whatever whatever. Which is to say that under their duvet it was warm and, as it was a cold December morning, John was happy to be beneath it. And even happier to have a naked Sherlock beneath _him._

John was naked too, though that wasn't important right now. What was important was pulling the duvet up over them like a fort and kissing Sherlock.

Kissing him right there on the breast bone. Then on each nipple. Then below each nipple. Then at the hollow of his throat, the sides of the throat, beneath the chin, on the cheeks, eyes, nose, lips, ears, head, then back down via throat, chest, nipples, and on to ribs and hipbones, bellybutton, belly, hips, cock, balls, each inch of thigh, knees, shins, on down to each toe—kisses so soft that Sherlock got hypersensitive and twitchy-giggly and breathless.

After this journey John manhandled his man until he was on his belly and John tried, there in duvet dark, he tried to start at feet and work up but he is a weak man and so he began on Sherlock's bum, kissing each and every ample inch of those twin rises and then he covered the rest of Sherlock in kisses, from soles of feet to sacrum to shoulders.

John cheated while he kissed Sherlock because John _chattered._ Mostly he asked questions—which kiss tickled the most? where did it feel best?—and while Sherlock answered John kissed four-five-six times quick-quick in one spot. Again and again and _again_ he did this under that duvet, kissing, talking, kissing until Sherlock rolled on top of him and said, "I can't, I can't, I can't keep track!"

And Sherlock understood.

John saw that, saw the light bulb blaze in wide pale eyes, and he whispered into Sherlock's mouth, "I'll do this every day. Every single day I'll wake you with kisses to each finger and freckle. I'll kiss your moles and your mouth. I'll kiss the back of your neck when we queue for coffee, and the top of your head when you're on the toilet. I'll kiss your toes when you're stretched out on the sofa and pretending not to watch movies with me and when you're setting things on fire at the kitchen table. I'll kiss any cheekbone that wanders near my mouth, any ear or shoulder blade. I will kiss you when you're sleeping and until my lips are chapped, I'll kiss you until you're bored with being kissed and then I'll kiss you some more.

"I'll keep kissing you for as long as you count my kisses Sherlock, for as long as you know how many there have been. Because this knowledge is not power. That you keep count makes me want to weep, and so I'll kiss you and kiss you, until we're old and toothless and even beyond that."

Nothing heals all at once. Bones must set, bruises must fade, and a man who has for too long believed himself unworthy needs do one thing: Let himself be loved.

That's hard work, and Sherlock Holmes is historically a lazy man, but the good thing about healing is that it happens whether you will it so or not.

So Sherlock stopped counting the kisses because one winter morning in December and under a duvet he'd lost count of the kisses.

In about a year he'll lose track of how many kinds of endearments John has for him after they have a half-day long 'discussion' as to whether _you gorgeous genius self-righteous git detective_ was two endearments, one, or none, and whether _you_ _mother fucking fuck of an amazing fucker_ was any kind of endearment at all.

Then, about a year after that Sherlock stopped counting how many times John talked about their growing old together after the squabble in which John insisted, at volume, in a large cafe during the morning rush that—

"—you can't be serious Sherlock, clearly a toothless blow job is going to feel much better than having a bald head rubbed up against your balls, I mean come on are you even _thinking_ this through?"

The year after that Sherlock completely lost track of how many months, weeks, and days had passed since he and John had first made love, and _this_ was because John found out Sherlock still a little bit sort of maybe _knew_ this fact and so John started randomly stating—also at volume and in crowded places—

"—one hundred and one million eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand nine hundred and two."

And…

"—one hundred and two million four hundred and seventy thousand four hundred and twenty one."

And also…

"—one hundred and three million three hundred and thirty four thousand four hundred and eighteen."

And then…

"—one hundred and four million—"

"John."

"—twenty five thousand—"

"John."

"—six hundred and fifty three—"

"I understand the point you're making. You do not have to keep—"

"—seconds since we became a couple. In case you were wondering."

"—making it."

"Though I'm not accounting for leap years."

"Thank you, Jo—"

"I could though. Account for them. Wait a minute and I'll—"

_Enough was enough._

Sherlock tugged John by his lapels.

John stood on tiptoe.

The cafe queue flowed around them.

And neither John nor Sherlock counted how many espressos the barista made before they stopped kissing.

(Fifteen.)

_Love is spilled mocha latte. And kissing under the duvet. And being patient enough to patiently love a man even when he believes he's unlovable. For me, love is John Watson and Sherlock Holmes._


	10. Friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your attraction to John doesn't stop in the bedroom Sherlock. Sometimes there'll be everyday moments when you look at him and remember the last time you were together. Your body remembers and responds like it did then. You can't help it.
> 
> "You won't want to."

Greg Lestrade is not used to Sherlock staring at him.

He's used to Sherlock staring, mind, just…more of a…well kind of more _through_ him.

But right now Sherlock's actually staring _at_ him, his own eyes dramatically wide, but it's not, like sometimes, a look of revelation on his face, this time it's…it's…

Lestrade stares back at Sherlock without giving thought to whether it's polite because this is Sherlock so the rules are different. There _are_ rules, of course, just not the same ones Greg uses with other people.

To be sure, Lestrade's polite and sensible and patient with Sherlock, but it's a veering polite, one that includes staring back when being stared at. It's a sensible that says, 'stop licking the corpse where other people can see you.' And it's a patience that includes closing the victim's bedroom door when Sherlock _doesn't_ stop licking the corpse because, Lestrade knows, in all likelihood Sherlock's already three quarters through solving his case for him _because_ he's licking the corpse and so there you go.

Anyway, the point is that Greg's staring back and after he does this long enough he realises something exciting: He realises Sherlock's going to ask him a question. One that doesn't involve corpses, their strange-smelling bedrooms, or the sticky stuff that's all up and down their left arm and which tastes like peppermint but smells like motor oil.

"Well go ahead then."

Like John and Mrs. Hudson, Greg sometimes finds it a comfort, getting to the conversational point without preamble. You can only really do that with Sherlock and so, sitting at his desk and staring at Sherlock staring at him, Lestrade does.

Sherlock returns the favour.

"I have an erection."

Lestrade's unsurprised by this question-not-question. He'd suspected that Sherlock's staring involved John Watson and here was the proof. Because Lestrade's not an idiot. Two weeks ago, when John and Sherlock walked into his office after Sherlock returned from a case in Glasgow, not only had Lestrade seen a difference in the two of them, he'd _smelled_ it.

Like the world's only pesky consulting detective, Lestrade uses more than his eyes to detect. Ears and fingers and especially the nose gets in there too, and though Greg had never thought much about the whole pheromone thing, knowing they were supposed to be something that flew under the human radar, their power purely subconscious, he can tell you right now that that's bollocks.

Because that day two weeks back Lestrade knew John and Sherlock had started shagging because that day Sherlock had come into his office smelling like an entire bloody harem.

The man was freshly shaved and showered, something he'd actually made a point of saying, though at first Greg didn't get the non sequitur. Then Sherlock stepped close to hand him a case file and— _wham_ —the hormone soup hit him and instantly Greg's gaze had swiveled to John and that was all he needed because the man who had so recently become Sherlock's flatmate? Well he had a hectic flush high on his cheekbones and so the obvious thing? Oh man was it _obvious._

That was two weeks ago and now, twenty seconds after John had slipped out of Lestrade's office for coffees, Sherlock was sitting across from Lestrade with an erection, and Greg was saying, "Sometimes they're inconvenient, aren't they?"

Sherlock fast blinked. "All he did was lean on your desk. That's all he did."

Sherlock then gestured in a random twirly way, as if to the recent past, the after-image of John placing his hands on Lestrade's desk, to the stiffy in his own Savile Row suit.

"Uh, no, that's not all he did."

Sherlock blinked some more, sat ramrod straight, glanced at Lestrade's door, then leaned closer and whispered, "Talk faster."

Greg grinned in delight at the turnabout, briefly toyed with talking slower. But Lestrade's not only polite, he's kind, especially to people like Sherlock. People so unique they're not only misunderstood, they also misunderstand. Mostly themselves. Lestrade's found that rare people with rare gifts, like Sherlock? Well, when treated badly they can become complicit in their own destruction, tearing themselves apart like an animal in a trap. Lestrade learned long ago that sometimes teasing such people was just another name for cruelty.

"John's uh, arse, his legs, the back of his neck—whatever you saw when he leaned on my desk? You've been kind of intimate with those parts of him quite a lot lately, yes?"

Sherlock bobbed his head and Lestrade bobbed back. "Yes, well your attraction to John doesn't stop in the bedroom Sherlock. Sometimes there'll be everyday moments when you look at him and remember the last time you were together. Your _body_ remembers and responds like it did then. You can't help it. You won't want to."

_You won't want to._

Sherlock's heart rate spiked. It felt as if he'd been suddenly shot through with adrenaline. It felt like the back of John's neck beneath his mouth, like his hand on John's belly, it felt like falling in love and lust and—

Lestrade's office door banged open, then banged closed as John, balancing three paper cups of coffee, shoved at it with his elbow. "Well I—"

Sherlock turned in his chair.

John stopped and looked at him. A second later his tongue poked out. Slashes of hectic colour rose in his cheeks.

Lestrade hummed low. Something tuneless but pleasant. He stood, stretched. He wandered over, plucked a steaming coffee cup from John's hand. He looked at John, then Sherlock. He sipped his coffee and said, "I think I'll go get myself a coffee. If you don't mind. Back in a bit of a bit."

Stilling humming Lestrade let himself out of his own office with a quiet click.

Ambling slow, Greg wandered through the hub-bub of his little corner of the Met, randomly beaming at people. After a bit of a bit he dropped his awful coffee into a bin. He decided he'd go for a little walk. Get something nice. Maybe a vanilla latte or a cappuccino or something. Yes, that was what he'd do. That should take him a good fifteen or twenty minutes what with this being evening rush and all.

Humming tuneless, Lestrade pushed out into the cool night.

*

Love is many things.

It's sweet desire for your new love and lust for him at unexpected times. It's passion burning bright and a head-over-heels falling that makes you feel as if you fly.

Love is also strolling down Victoria Street to buy a coffee you don't really need. It's the friendship of a rare man who understands two rare men.

Sometimes love is…well sometimes it's Greg Lestrade.

_I think Rupert Graves gives such wonderful, weary, everyday grace to Lestrade. Also, this was in part inspired by a conversation between John and Sherlock in Chellefic's lovely "[echoes through time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/339204)," where the boys talk about passion and lust._


	11. Destined

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some men believe in destiny.
> 
> One of those men is John Watson.

"I didn't intend on going to Bart's the morning we met."

John tugged up the cushions on the sofa. Nothing. He tugged up the cushion on his chair. Nothing. He kicked the chair. If he'd lost his new eye glasses so help him he was going to make Sherlock _sleep_ on the sofa.

"Yeah, well I didn't intend on going to the park that day either."

Because John never actually loses his glasses. No, no he does not. Sherlock Holmes, who required vision correction a good year earlier than John, frequently 'borrows' his glasses. So that he can more responsibly ignore Scotland Yard reports he's supposed to read, or to better see the thing on the kitchen table to which he's just accidentally set fire.

"We nearly didn't meet, John."

It's not as if John likes wearing glasses, mind you, not any more than anyone who had fine eyesight likes it. And actually John can justifiably be more vain than most about his vision, due to a few instances in his past when aiming a very small thing at a larger thing's heart stood him in good stead.

"Yes, but we did meet."

Yet John had accepted that those days of flawless sight were done, and as part of that acceptance he liked to _wear the glasses_ he'd gone and bought.

"All you had to do was walk a different route through the park and Mike would never have seen you."

John realised now that he should have purchased two pairs of spectacles. Or four. Maybe twelve. However many it would take for him to hold on to just one. Or half of one. At this rate John'd be happy with a monocle, so long as he could read the paper for five minutes. Five sodding minutes because they have to be at the Yard in an hour to sign statements and oh by the way John will need his missing glasses for _that,_ too.

"Then we'd have crossed paths at Bart's."

John squinted at a pile of newspapers on their desk. He pushed them to the floor with entirely more vigour than required. They went flying but he heard an eye glasses-sized thunk when they landed because, though John's eyes may be going south, his hearing is still bloody impeccable. "Ah ha!"

John fell to his knees—

"Ow!"

—and _that_ hurt. Which was just great. Today his body was suddenly on this fucking pilgrimage toward decrepitude. To compensate for his now-aching knees John damn well _flung_ the newspapers around the room in his effort to unearth his glasses.

Sitting straight-backed stiff in his chair, one fluttery page landed on Sherlock's steepled hands. "At Bart's? How?"

"I don't know, I'd have had lunch with Mike in the courtyard cafe sometime. You'd have swooped by like the, the…" One of the papers had a large photo of a nesting pair of Regent's Park swans. John paused and smiled at the birds. "…biggest, flashiest swan on the planet."

Sherlock, unaware of the newspaper on his person, stared into the fireplace as if within its darkness he could all too clearly see their near miss. "You couldn't have. The courtyard cafe wasn't there then."

John read a little further, smiled bigger. The swans were gay. That was why they were in the paper. A rare nesting pair of pretty, pretty _boy_ birds.

"So Mike and me, we'd have been stretching our legs or something out there. I'd have seen you on your way from the morgue to the, the…maybe the pathology museum. As you flew past you'd have said something sassy to Mike. The sun would have been glinting on your hair. Or in your eyes. You'd have looked so big and brash and maybe you'd have winked at Mike. I'd have asked him to introduce us. Easy peasy."

Sherlock blink-squinted into the fireplace, looking for this certainty.

John sat back on his heels, gazed out the window. "Or an ex-army mate of mine, Magdalena, she's got a surgery over by the Yard. I'd have probably got around to seeing if she had some locum work for me."

John grinned, slid off his heels, to his bum, back thunking against Sherlock's legs. He smiled at the bright ceiling and saw there fine things, true things. "I'd have been working at the surgery one night and you'd have come in, dripping wet after an unexpected dunking in the Thames during a…mmm…a boat chase." John giggled. "You'd have been coughing what with all that nasty river water, and you'd have been so, so wet and I'd have tried to not notice your shivering and your nipples and you'd have winked at _me_ and said something about needing a flatmate."

Sometimes it's seductively easy to become snared in our own anxieties. They feed one another, begin to seem like certainties. But they're not. They are only thoughts, given the power only we give them.

"But John…"

John turned, tugged the newspaper off Sherlock—and oh, look, there were his eyeglasses, on a sodding chain around Sherlock's sodding, swan-like neck. John stood, then sat, straddling Sherlock's lap. He tugged the glasses from the chain, then threw the chain in the fireplace. He put the glasses on his own head and then turned Sherlock's chin so they were eye-to-eye.

"One day, years ago, when I was broken and you were lonely we met. On that day I went somewhere I never go because for some reason I couldn't stay in that bedsit a minute longer and so I didn't. Despite the fact that my leg hurt and my arm hurt I went into the city and I wandered around until Mike saw me. I marched right by him you know, but he looked up in time and saw me. And then he took me to you and we met. We met because we were meant to meet Sherlock. It was always going to happen. It was never not going to happen. I would have found you Sherlock, I promise you that. There is no world in which I would have stopped looking for you, not until I found you. We are inevitable. Yes?"

Sometimes love looks like a grand promise, an impossible promise, a promise a man can't really make…but makes anyway.

Squinting, Sherlock took the glasses off John's head, put them on so he could look deep into fine eyes of certain blue.

"Yes." 

_John and Sherlock aren't real, but my certainty that they'd have met no matter what_ feels _real. I believe they are inevitable. If you agree do please share a line or two of other ways you think they could have met (I may use your idea for future stories!)._


	12. Finding Redemption Wherever You Can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope is always the right response...

Molly Hooper has seen much.

She's seen far more than Sherlock, more even than John, it is her everyday life to see bodies brutalised. Autopsies are not normal, they are carried out when there is a criminal or medical uncertainty. So there are too many days when Molly Hooper sees parents, friends, witnesses look upon a corpse and despair. There's little redemption in Molly Hooper's world. No bones are set that become stronger in the healing, no medication assuaging infection…there is too often just the misery attending a suspicious death.

So good doctor Hooper, if you'll pardon the passion, can be excused for god damn finding redemption any way she can.

For a bit too long that redemption was six feet tall and beautiful as a fevered saint. The very opposite of a fool, Molly figured out quick that Sherlock was like smoke, she'd never hold him, he would never turn those eyes on her, but that was fine for awhile. When the world's too often ugly sometimes beauty is more than reason enough.

After John, oh after John Watson, Molly loved to look at Sherlock even more, because after John Sherlock was _incandescent._

He was, pardon the poetry, a flame dancing. He was so bright it was almost painful to see. Molly could not look away, not for the longest time, but it was with curiosity that she gazed, with a scientist's eye that takes things apart and _learns._

What Molly Hooper learned was that life could be more. That hope was always the right response. And that if she wished to be a flame dancing, it'd be lovely to find someone like John Watson, but she could also find her own fuel.

So now Molly finds redemption and love _everywhere._ Sometimes there's a little in iced biscuits dipped in coffee so hot she almost burns her tongue. Sometimes it's in spending all day slouched on the sofa with her cousin, laptops on their bellies and laughing themselves sick saying, "No, no, look at this!"

Sometimes redemption is taking an improvisation class and getting up in front of everyone, pretending she's a puppy or pregnant or painting a nude man and going so red every single time that her classmates start calling her Ruby. The new guy actually thinks that's her name.

Sometimes love is found in doing what she does and taking comfort from the fact that it has purpose, that opening up the dead provides answers for the living and yes, sometimes peace.

Love is knowing that, even though she wishes her world bigger, she doesn't want to be anywhere else _in_ it. London is enough.

And some days it's enough to fall in love with someone else's love. To watch two flames dance and feed one another with their light.

To bask in their glow and be warmed.

_I don't know what 221b_hound and I were talking about but something one of us said to the other led to this. Molly, Molly, I've always though she's so strong, the strongest character on Sherlock because she has to work for that strength._


	13. Soft Peen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes John's penis will not give Sherlock's penis the time of day.
> 
> Sometimes.

It's cuter than it has any right to be. That's what a woman might say if she were in a philosophical mood and gazing upon one for the first time.

This is because an uncircumcised penis at rest resembles—what with its occasional stray hair sticking straight out and its wrinkly skin much like a cocoon in which something small nestles—well it looks rather like a dozy caterpillar, plump and precious.

An uncircumcised man in a mood philosophical would likely have nothing much to say about his own quiescent cock. He's carted that thing around for years and seen it in every state in which it's capable of being. The bloom, so to speak, has gone off the precious rose.

Yet a man's _lover's_ uncircumcised cock, that's another thing entirely. The soft penis of a man's lover can leave him with _feelings._ Like so…

*

The week had been long and successful and busy and full, full of foiling crime and catching criminals in the act. But first there had been indoor climbing at a massive castle—literally, it was a castle—in north London. Oh so _much_ with the climbing.

Upon Sherlock's proposal that John be the one actually _doing_ the climbing—the whole rope and harness and tiny, tiny shoes thing—John had looked right in Sherlock's face and said, "Fuck no multiplied by hell no with a side order of you are god damn on your own mister, because I have no intention of trusting a stranger to belay me while you swan around this adult playground in spandex."

John had ended up doing all the climbing.

Which was why, the morning after, every one of John's muscles vibrated. It was an exquisite pain, tender and prickly and John was sure for minutes at a time that he was having an out of body experience. In between those transcendent moments he lay pancake-flat on their bed, unwilling to move unless the flat caught fire, and even then…

Anyway, in _that_ circumstance Sherlock could be hard as a fucking diamond and John's penis would not give Sherlock's penis the time of day.

That was not to say that Sherlock was trying to get a leg over right now, because he wasn't. What he _was_ actually doing was stroking his supine sweetheart's forehead and backhandedly apologising again.

"I'm sorry you had to do the climbing and that the clue was at the other climbing centre but we got them John, just focus on that."

It just so happened Sherlock was saying this with an erection mashed against John's hip because all morning Sherlock had been reading an epic-long fan fiction someone left on John's blog.

The only reason he was not _still_ reading it was because John had tried to scratch his own bollocks a minute ago and moving hurt so. damn. much that he moaned like he does in the story. Sherlock had dropped his phone and curled up next to John and was right now scratching his balls for him.

When John sighed in relief Sherlock somehow took that as a direct request to pull out his pocket magnifier—

"Where did that just come from Sherlock? You're completely naked."

—and slither down the bed, hovering like some great big gnat with a pocket magnifier. He began to look at John's balls and his penis. His soft, soft penis.

He laughed about two seconds later.

John was annoyed about that but it was impossible to tell because John couldn't move, not even to huff. It was fine though, Sherlock started to explain, because Sherlock _always_ explains.

"John, I am in love with your flaccid penis. It's wrinkly and has these sparse little hairs. It looks just like my great Uncle Alpert when he was startled. I was not in love with Uncle Alpert though."

John was trying to think if all of that was funny or _more_ annoying and then Sherlock patted John's soft peen as if it were adorable and John decided it was not funny or annoying it was wonderful and now he wanted to shag Sherlock.

"Ow."

Even thinking about it hurt.

Maybe Sherlock would shag him. If John didn't reach or arch or turn or even breathe deep Sherlock could probably get them both off. He was a genius, right?

Then Sherlock laughed. John skewed his gaze left.

And there Sherlock was, sitting spread legged on the bed, slumped over his own belly with the spineless disregard of a cat, holding the magnifier over his own soft, soft peen.

And he was in the middle of a monologue.

"—never thought to look. I don't know why. I once spent an hour dissecting a half dozen of my own eyelashes but this—" Sherlock snapped the magnifier closed, then waved it over their penises as if it were a magic penis wand. "—I never did this."

John does so much stuff he doesn't want to do. He kind of lies to Mrs. Hudson about what's in her bins. He reads the paper after Sherlock's torn out the possibly-a-case! articles. He climbs a climbing wall for hours so Sherlock can foil an international ring of diamond thieves. But he does all of these things because in the end they're worth it. Because _Sherlock_ is worth it.

So John moaned and groaned and swore and panted himself onto his belly, he grunted his legs wide, wider, widest and he said, "Well? There's more stuff to look at."

Silence.

Silence.

Then a gleeful giggle. And the soft snick of a pocket magnifier opening.

_Yes, I just implied that love is allowing your one true love to examine your anus with a magnifier. This is what becomes of things when Iriswallpaper says there's not enough 'soft peen' in the fandom and I have a conniption fit of joy over the phrase. Thank you Iris! P.S.[This is where](http://archiveofourown.org/works/383020) I got the name for old Uncle Alpert. P.P.S. Below is The Castle Climbing Centre in North London. A sorta-real castle!_


	14. Love Is a Four Letter Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's created a spreadsheet of the swear words John most favours, when they are deployed, and their 'heat' index.
> 
> After a few months of meticulously keeping records of John's blasphemies, Sherlock uncovered something unexpected.

"You selfish man."

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes have been lovers for nearly two years. By now Sherlock has heard John swear.

"You selfish, _selfish_ man."

Sherlock's created a spreadsheet of the swear words John most favours, when they are deployed, and their 'heat' index.

"Little shit," for example, tends to have a heat rating of barely one, as it's almost never employed as a true swear. It's more John's statement that he disapproves of what Sherlock has done, will not condone what Sherlock has done, however he is in fact a teensy bit turned on by what Sherlock has done.

"I can't."

When John calls Sherlock "beautiful bastard," for another example, this swear always has a heat rating of one thousand, where heat here is measured by how quickly John shoves his hands down the back of Sherlock's trousers and cups his arse, then snogs them both silent.

"I just can't."

After a few months of meticulously keeping records of John's blasphemies, Sherlock uncovered something unexpected.

"Don't ask me to be okay with this."

Though John often swears to express rueful delight or very real pain, the very worst swearing John Watson does is the kind that fails to contain a single curse.

"You can't do it again Sherlock," John said whisper-low, "not again."

It is then Sherlock has learned to feel very real fear.

For John only swears without swearing when he has nothing left, when he's empty of everything he can think to say, hurt beyond the foul words to tell it.

The problem is, Sherlock's still too good at bringing John to this point. These are their early years, the 'courtship' years Sherlock will primly think later, years when Sherlock still can't believe John would love him utterly, would spend long night whispering the words to describe it, with all the blood and heartbeats he has to support it.

Which means at this point the genius does stupid, _stupid_ shit, like learn he's got a spot on his lung after getting a chest x-ray—the case was less than a three and the x-ray technician didn't even know how to _spell_ embezzler—and then, when he unexpectedly got lab results back that said, "—a dark spot in the inferior lobe. While this appears to be an x-ray artifact, we would like to schedule you for another scan as soon as possible."

Here's where the stupidity came in: Sherlock panicked because Sherlock's never actually disclosed to John how much he used to smoke, how he still sneaks a cigarette now and then, and so Sherlock just damn well flew off the handle, thought _cancer, cancer, cancer._

The letter went into his pocket, the panic did too because right then John walked into 221B behind him, so Sherlock stomped up the stairs to hide the lump in his throat and the thrumming of his heart and the next day Sherlock went and bought milk and tea and jam because he needed to get out of the house and make the call—"Thursday? You don't have an earlier appointment?"—and he forgot the milk and the tea but at least he brought home three sorts of jam.

Then Sherlock threw himself into a brace of experiments—one involving jam—with the idea that he would busy his brain for the next three days, until Thursday, Thursday, _Thursday_ finally arrived.

They called him on Wednesday with a you-can-come-today cancellation.

But Sherlock was showering, and so John did what John's done since they started doing what _they_ do, he answered Sherlock's mobile for him.

"Hello, this is Rebecca, may I speak to Mr. Holmes please?"

Now here's the thing about Dr. John H. Watson. He knows the tone. He _knows the tone._

Patient privacy, et cetera et cetera, John completely gets why hospitals and clinics and labs do not identify themselves on the telephone. But John _knows the tone._

John relayed that Mr. Holmes was busy, encouraged Rebecca to call back in an hour. John thought he might need at least that.

He was wrong.

The conversation degenerated a couple dozen words in.

"The hospital called. They'll call back." That's what John said from the bedroom doorway after Sherlock was fully dressed.

He waited until then because he thought it important Sherlock have a chance to armour up.

In the end it was John who needed the armour.

Sherlock followed behind him as John went to the sitting room and picked up his coat, put it down, picked it up and placed it over the back of Sherlock's chair, then sat in the chair.

In halting soft words Sherlock explained and it was afterward that John swore without swearing, it was after the reassurance— _the reassurance—_ that Sherlock hadn't wanted to hurt John unnecessarily that John hung his head, wordless.

Until…

…Sherlock asked a simple question.

"Why would it have been better to tell you, to hurt you, too?"

John's loved, he has. Girls and boys and then women and now a man. So he understands a little bit more about what love sometimes is, just a little bit more than Sherlock.

So he stopped his curseless cursing and grunted as if something hurt deep.

Sherlock knelt and took John's hand. "Tell me."

For a moment John closed his eyes tight. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I think maybe it's not right. That I'm asking too much from you. You…you don't owe me everything Sherlock, you don't. Your body is yours…but…but you can't save me from hurt by…by…"

John's gaze shifted and Sherlock knew the look. He'd perfected it, the going inward, the walling off, the desperate search for armour.

He gathered both of John's hands, put them on his own fear-damp face, and begged. "Teach me."

That inward gaze faded and John's eyes flicked back and forth as he searched for words.

"If you suffer in silence…that hurts me. If you ever hurt and I can't hold you, help you, soothe you, croon at you and pet you and cry with you…oh god Sherlock, _that's_ what hurts me. When you hurt and don't comfort me by letting me comfort you _…_ that…that…"

Sherlock loves John utterly, he spends long nights whispering the words to describe that love, offers up his heart and body in support of it. Why, he wondered, did he keep believing John couldn't possibly want to give him the same?

"Five years ago I used to smoke every day all day sometimes and sometimes even now I bum a fag from the front desk sergeant who's sweet on you the black one not the white one and I tell her things about you like how you have twelve different sorts of grey in your hair and you like honey-lemon flavoured lip balm and John I'm so scared of what they'll find on the x-ray and I feel like I'm going to vomit and I love you please hold me John, John, John."

John did not hold Sherlock.

John tugged out his mobile. He dialed St. Bart's. He talked to two people. An appointment for an x-ray was arranged for thirty minutes hence. John then hung up, kissed Sherlock's face, took his hand, and in silence they left the flat.

When the all-clear results came back too many long days later, John kissed Sherlock and he kissed him and oh how he kissed him as he crooned, "My beautiful bastard, my beautiful, beautiful, wonderful bastard."

_For John Watson, love will often mean being very cranky when a person he loves—Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, Greg—has carried a burden that could have been halved had they let him help. Never save your pain from John Watson. He will not thank you. P.S. Chocola, sorry if this brought back feels from_ [that _story._](http://archiveofourown.org/works/487409/chapters/849758)


	15. Me, Mine, Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My god, did I do that? I’m so sorry Sherlock.” That was the first time.
> 
> “Oh no that’s…how did we do that?” That was the second time.
> 
> It was the third time John finally twigged.

“My god, did I do that? I’m so sorry Sherlock.”

That was the first time.

“Oh no that’s…how did we do _that?”_

That was the second time.

“Are you pressing on that? Stop, you’ll make it bruise.”

That was the third time, and that was when John finally twigged: The small scratches he finds on Sherlock’s body now and then? The wee bruises that are darker and more tender than they ought to be?

At first John thought they were from lovemaking—except it’s early days yet and John’s careful, more naturally inclined to sweet and slow than his adventurous new love. And so John does not scratch Sherlock, and he doesn’t bite and yet…and yet…

“Sherlock, did you do that to yourself?”

It’s still the early days of Sherlock’s first and only romantic relationship and right from that first night he’d discovered in himself a reticence he didn’t know he had, an unexpected shyness. So when John leans close, mouth open at his neck Sherlock’s body prickles with the gooseflesh of possibility but he doesn’t say-ask-plead…

_John please please…_

_…John please mark me there._

And so John doesn’t. He nibbles softly at lobe or lip, he runs nails lightly over Sherlock’s back, scratching at phantom itches until Sherlock moans, but John never digs in, not tooth nor claw, and though he wants to Sherlock has no idea how to ask because if John says, “Why?” the great Sherlock Holmes doesn’t have the words to reply.

Except he very much does. He knows exactly why. Both whys. The first as wrong as the last and so he doesn’t say, “Bite me and scratch because the pain is bad and good, it stops me and starts me and makes me ache and need and want you even more. Scratch me and bite me, scrape and bruise, so tomorrow I can see your presence on my body, so that others can see where you’ve been.”

It’s early, early days and so Sherlock doesn’t know how to say those words to John so he doesn’t say them.

Instead Sherlock marks himself.

Last Tuesday John stood behind him at the window of 221B, wrapped his arms across Sherlock’s pale chest, kissed the back of his neck.

Later, when John left to do some case work, Sherlock ran clawed hands over his chest, right where John’s arms had crossed.

In bed day before yesterday John had kissed his way down Sherlock’s arm, until he got to the hand Sherlock had over his own cock. He kissed there too until Sherlock came.

Later Sherlock sucked the flesh over each kiss John had left on his arm, until pale bruises bloomed.

And then tonight John finally got it, and wondered why it had taken him so long.

"Tell me.”

Sherlock knew what John wanted to be told but he still doesn’t know about the telling. He doesn't know how to be honest about something about which he spent so many years lying. Mostly to himself.

"Is it the pain?" John prompts, knowing that guessing wrong is nearly as good as getting it right.

Sherlock shakes his head no. And then yes.

"There's more."

Sherlock shakes his head yes. And yes, and yes.

John thinks he knows what else these self-inflicted wounds on Sherlock's flesh mean, yet John's shy about what he knows.

Because no one's ever done what Sherlock does with-for-and-because of John.

What Sherlock does is _crow._

Two days after they became lovers, when they finally emerged from the flat and into a morning mist, ravenous and in search of scones and tea—on this Sherlock had been most specific—John hadn't thought twice, he'd gone to shove his hands in his pockets only to find one clasped so tight in Sherlock's gloved hand he could feel his lover shake.

John had looked at him, worried for the fleetest of moments, but though Sherlock's body trembled, he walked down that pavement like a prince, chin high, shoulders back, pride in every line of his body.

There's been no one in John's life who was so pleased that John was in _theirs_ and so John's shy about saying, "You mark yourself to show that I was there, at your neck, along your strong arms, at the sweet insides of each elbow. You want people to know that there is, that we are, that we've become _me…mine…us."_

It turns out that John doesn't have to say it because he sees that Sherlock sees his understanding. So Sherlock says it for him, "Yes. Everywhere. You."

Some days, some weeks, it's more important than other times, and from this night Sherlock will know how to ask.

"Yes. Everywhere. You."

So on those days, over those weeks, through all of their years, John will mark Sherlock's body with tooth and nail, and then on these bruises and scratches he'll rub kisses and come, sweat and spit, a most unsanitary balm, and more than perfect.

The marks they most often leave on one another's bodies are touches. A hand grasping a hand in a lift. A cheek resting against a chest when waiting for a train. A kiss hello or goodbye. These ephemeral marks are the ones that proclaim most loudly, before prince and client and friend…

_…me, mine, us._

_Have I mentioned lately, how much I love John and Sherlock? It's perhaps time I mentioned that again. They are mine. They are ours. They are._


	16. The Bean Counter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am warning you, Sherlock Holmes. Do not do it."
> 
> There was no good reason for Sherlock to do it. Actually it was absurd, what Sherlock wanted to do.
> 
> So of course Sherlock did it.

"So help me god Sherlock, if you dare."

No matter how often people joke, Sherlock is not _actually_  six years old. Because, unlike a child of that vintage, Sherlock is aware of right and wrong, he knows exactly what's appropriate and most certainly what is not.

Which is what makes it so easy to _act_ like a six year old.

"I am warning you, Sherlock Holmes. Do not do it."

There was no good reason for Sherlock to do it. Actually it was absurd, what Sherlock wanted to do. Yet there is not a living human being disinclined to sometimes see _what will happen if…_

It's not Sherlock's fault that his  _what ifs_  are often bigger than the what ifs of others, that they are more likely to burn, or that in some instances they are what narrow-minded ex-army husbands would call "gross and you better be kidding me with this."

Speaking of that military man, he knows full well that ignoring a child is the best way to calm that child _down,_ so John turned around with straight-backed _precision_ and he went to the kitchen to fetch his sodding _medical journal._

And that is when, while John's back was turned, Sherlock did the thing you absolutely do not want to know he did, no you do not.

When John returned with his journal he thought about just motoring right on through the sitting room and on to the loo, where he would take up residence for the duration, but John is as big an infant as his big infant and so, as he headed to their bedroom, he glanced at the coffee table and John Watson did the thing he told himself he would not do.

He counted the jelly beans upon that table.

 _One, two, three…_ four. Four jelly beans were missing from that table.

John's stride slowed. For long seconds he pretended to himself that he had miscounted. For a couple more he watched Sherlock's face for any signs of residual chewing. Despite staring for seven silent seconds no actual chewing was discerned.

Of course not. Because Sherlock had done the thing John had told him not to do. The thing a freshly-showered, super-clean Sherlock idly wondered about doing because Sherlock Holmes is a perverse man who will set fire to his own fingernails if enough bored.

Never mind that John giggled when Sherlock first contemplated doing it, because John will insist that giggling isn't even remotely in the same vicinity as encouragement or permission or a hearty "I wonder too."

No, giggling is an involuntary _noise_  and as such it should not be mistaken for encouragement or permission or anything remotely like a two-thumbs up to the idea of putting half a dozen jelly beans up your bottom to see if it will enhance your partner's rimming experience.

_Because no it will mother fucking not._

All of these thoughts flitted through John's head in those stutter-stepped seconds between deciding whether to continue on into their bedroom or veer back to the sitting room, but the answer was crystal clear and everyone knew that and so the sitting room it would be because if there is one thing a giant six year old who wants attention from John will _get_ when he misbehaves, it is attention from John.

As such, John stopped where he'd stutter-stepped. He let the medical journal slip through his fingers and to the floor.

Though he was facing their front door he was side-eyeing his husband and so he saw him seeing that journal land in a bent-paged splat on the hardwoods. He also saw the flicker of a smile quickly wiped from Sherlock's face. The quick smile that said Sherlock knew he was in trouble because John is meticulous with his reading material. He does not fold, spindle, or mutilate his journals, his Moleskines or the paperwork they fill out for the Met.

(Sherlock makes an actual effort of dotting the paperwork with tea stains, ash, and certain substances Lestrade suspects do not belong anywhere near bureaucratic paperwork but he is not going to ask so he can say in all honesty, "I don't know.")

Anyway, Sherlock has not had a case from that detective inspector for five days, three hours, and twenty-two minutes and he has already discovered that fingernails burn better when they are not still attached to you and that Mrs. Hudson can drink a heroic amount of whiskey-laced tea while she listens to him read through his ten-thousand word monograph on which scattered children's toys lead to the most broken bones during a home invasion.

So the point is, Sherlock is either going to find a hammer and pound a hole in the plaster in the upstairs bedroom to see if, as legend has it, the bones of the builder are wedged between the bracing, or he is going to get some attention from John and at this moment Sherlock is so full of boredom he will take a railing just as readily as a more-pleasant reaming.

And so, when John dropped his ridiculous journal—who could read _Technical Expansions in Healthcare_ without actually dying?—Sherlock was ready.

Ready for shouty, pedantic, annoyed, _I-told-you-not-to_ John, ready just ready. Oh yes, ready, ready, ready.

For everything but what happened. And what happened was John picking up his medical journal and heading toward the loo as he'd started to do.

Except not.

For on his way John said, "I hate this magazine I have no idea why Harry bought me this subscription unless she wants me dead of ennui. Not like she'd get anything, you're the only one in the will, and all the other official stuff. So, let's go love."

Here's a very strange thing.

Love did not "go."

Which is to say John was in the bedroom, naked to the waist in both directions, had plumped up the rimming pillows—they have rimming pillows—and was sitting casually on the bed patiently waiting, but Sherlock and his sweets-harbouring arse did not come round the corner.

For a moment John was disgruntled. He would never in a million years admit he'd gone and got interested in tasting Sherlock's jelly bean-sheltering anus, but he had and was now restive at the delay.

John's moment of pique passed and so he went in search of Sherlock who, as it happened was still on the sofa, only now instead of being so bored he'd insert jelly beans into his arse, Sherlock was curled up on his side and trying to keep his shit together.

Because here's the thing.

Sherlock had long since known that John had long since changed all his paperwork to reflect the fact that he's now married. That is what married people do, and what Mycroft did for Sherlock approximately two minutes after Sherlock and John took their vows.

Yet it has been three months and twenty minutes since that wedding day and this was the first time the absolutely mundane, glorious, thing had come up that…that they were one another's everything. Their in-case-of-emergency. Their next-of-kin. Their speaker-of-last-wishes.

It hit Sherlock right then, that hour, and so very clear: He was John's voice.

Should John be unable to speak for himself, John trusted Sherlock to be that, to know what to say, he _trusted_ Sherlock. Oh, Sherlock's brain had known this. Since that first day. Since the cabbie.

It was only today, now, with four jelly beans up his rectum—two red, a yellow, and an orange—that Sherlock's heart figured it out.

Alas, the timing could have been more convenient.

Then again the timing wasn't so bad. Because the madness that is them, the eye-rolling lunacy of life at 221B? It perhaps could not be better represented than it was right now. By a man who'd put sweeties up his bum as a boredom cure and a man who wanted to eat him out afterward to see what that was like.

John came round the corner to the sitting room. He sat on the floor by the sofa, tilted his head so he and Sherlock were eye-to-eye.

"Your official stuff. You trust me." Sherlock whispered. "Why?"

Blue eyes to blue eyes, John blinked and John thought. He wanted very much to say the right words. But he's always had them, tucked away safe.

"Most of the time you're crazy as a March hare and erratic as a butterfly. You're all flight and flutter and dash. But Sherlock. Sherlock. When you commit to something you do it with _everything._ If I asked you to carry my used up, hundred-year-old bones across the Sahara, I know you would. I mean you'd whinge about it and stop a lot and probably buy a camel or something to do most of the work, but you'd do it. You'd take me across a desert because I'd have asked and you'd have said yes and you don't lie to me."

Sherlock sucked in a sharp breath, then huffed it out guilty.

"Not about anything that matters. And besides, when you do lie—like about eating those jelly beans which I now know you didn't because your breath still smells like coffee so that means you actually put eight beans up your arse—you're so contrite about it that it's the same as not lying really."

John grinned and traced a fingertip over Sherlock's lips. Still a bit delicate in the feelings, Sherlock closed his eyes.

"So, that's why. And now I've got the rimming pillows ready, and I bet your body heat has done melty hocus pocus with those beans, and I've been sitting funny on this floor and mashing my erection for five long minutes—"

Sherlock peeked over the sofa edge.

"—and so I _oof!"_

Sherlock was up and tugging John to the bedroom and before anyone could say _three red two green a yellow and two orange,_ Sherlock was on his belly with his bum in the air and John was eating him out for about a year and you're just going to have to trust them: Those orgasms were _sweet._

_Send help. I have no idea where in my psyche this came from. But I will tell you a thing I do know: Sherlock would totally put jelly beans up his arse if he had nothing else to do. And he'd also be weepy at the idea that he is John's voice. Somehow both of these thoughts make me happy. On second thought, please do not send help._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Not Even the Corgis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429847) by [Darth_Nonie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darth_Nonie/pseuds/Darth_Nonie)
  * [Panacea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4730051) by [noadventureshere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noadventureshere/pseuds/noadventureshere)




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